What you get: With the Dollar Beard Club, you’ll get all natural beard products such as oils, balm, wax, growth accelerators, and more. All you have to do to get started is build a kit which includes choosing an oil, an essential, a shower item, an accelerator, and a accessory, and you’ll be sent that monthly. However, you can always just pick a single product and only have that in your kit which is by far the cheapest option.
Dollar Shave Club. Subscription grooming boxes aren’t just for women. The Dollar Shave Club is a monthly service that delivers high-quality razor cartridges for both men and women. Choices range from a two-blade razor for $3 per month to a six-blade model for $9. If you don’t like the blade you’re using, you can switch membership levels at any time. When you first join, you get a handle to go with your cartridge of choice and a selection of sample-sized grooming products, such as “shave butter”; if you like them, you can add on a full-sized version to your monthly delivery.
Overbuying. While a subscription box usually costs less than buying all the items in it separately, there’s a good chance you wouldn’t buy all those items if they didn’t come in your box. For instance, a $29-a-month BarkBox subscription works out to $350 each year. Chances are, that’s a lot more than you’d normally spend just for toys and treats. Over the long term, it could add significantly to the cost of owning a dog.
Dollar Shave Club. Subscription grooming boxes aren’t just for women. The Dollar Shave Club is a monthly service that delivers high-quality razor cartridges for both men and women. Choices range from a two-blade razor for $3 per month to a six-blade model for $9. If you don’t like the blade you’re using, you can switch membership levels at any time. When you first join, you get a handle to go with your cartridge of choice and a selection of sample-sized grooming products, such as “shave butter”; if you like them, you can add on a full-sized version to your monthly delivery.
birchbox#TBT to when we launched Birchbox in Canada last December! 🇨🇦 Please give a big Birchbox welcome to our Canada subscribers who will now be joining us on this Instagram account and the latest addition to the Birchbox team: @caseycrowetaylor, our Canada Social Media Manager! LOBBL (Lots Of Birchbox Love) xo #Birchbox #BirchboxCA 📷: @theprettyvain
Birchbox. This is the box that started it all, and it’s still one of the most popular, with over a million subscribers. For $10 per month or $110 per year, it provides an assortment of five beauty samples – all specially chosen to meet your particular tastes. Items include lipstick, mascara, skin cream, dry shampoo, and fragrance, all from high-end brands. If you like the samples in your monthly box, you can order full-size versions from the Birchbox website. Birchbox now offers a men’s grooming box as well, with products like hair gel, deodorant, and beard oil.
5. PawPost: PawPost is the purrfect subscription box service for your four-legged companion. You can choose from three box options: the Cat Box, Dog Box and the Dog Treat Box. Each box contains a carefully curated selection of eco-friendly toys, natural, grain free food and treats and hygiene products. The Dog Treat Box features only edible goodies that are delectable, nutritious and organic. All the products are sourced from brands (like Beautiful Joe’s, Mutts & Hounds and Freak MEOWt) that support animal welfare. Plus, they also do special, festive-themed boxes that include lots of holiday-inspired merch for Valentine’s Day, Halloween and Christmas (now isn't that pawsome?)
Subscription shopping also has some big drawbacks. The most obvious one is that, with most services, you don’t get to choose the items you receive. You get the thrill of looking forward to a surprise package, but when you open it, the surprise isn’t always a pleasant one. You could find yourself stuck with a bunch of stuff you don’t actually want, and not enough of the stuff you need.
Are These Items You Can Use? The most important thing to know before you sign up for a monthly box is whether you’ll use everything in it. With some services, such as Dollar Shave Club, it’s easy to tell, because you know exactly what you’ll be getting every month. But with others, you can’t be sure what to expect. However, you can get a pretty good idea by checking reviews online to find out what items the box has held for the past few months before you take the plunge.
GlossyBox. GlossyBox is a pricier service than Birchbox, with monthly rates ranging from $17.50 to $21 depending on the length of your contract. However, it gives you more for your money, providing both samples and full-sized products from trendy brands. Consumerist reports that when its sister publication, ShopSmart magazine, tried the box, it included a full-sized lipstick that would have cost $20 by itself. Unlike Birchbox, this service usually sends the same items to all its subscribers each month.
If your kids are always glued to your iPad or laptop, then they'll love this subscription that teaches them how to code. Each box has an activity book with various coding projects, which kids develop into an app through the Bitsbox website. They'll be dying to show off their digital creations to friends and family, plus it gives them hours of entertainment.
Difficulty of Quitting. In theory, you can cancel a subscription box at any time. However, it’s not always easy to do. McCall says the hassle of canceling is often enough to make people hold on to a service, even after they’ve lost interest in it. He compares it to a gym membership you’re no longer using: As long as the fee is low enough to make it seem like a good deal, it won’t seem worthwhile to cancel the service.
Dollar Shave Club. Subscription grooming boxes aren’t just for women. The Dollar Shave Club is a monthly service that delivers high-quality razor cartridges for both men and women. Choices range from a two-blade razor for $3 per month to a six-blade model for $9. If you don’t like the blade you’re using, you can switch membership levels at any time. When you first join, you get a handle to go with your cartridge of choice and a selection of sample-sized grooming products, such as “shave butter”; if you like them, you can add on a full-sized version to your monthly delivery.
Stitch Fix offers boxes for men and women from both well-known and new brands like Joie, Citizens for Humanity, Original Penguin, and Converse. Items cost an average of $55 each, and the $20 “styling fee” is deducted from the cost. If you choose to keep all five items, you get a 25% discount on the lot. If not, you can send back the ones you don’t want in a prepaid envelope.
Spice up things in the bedroom with this collection of different sensual products — perfect for those Saturday nights when the kids are sleeping at their friends' houses. You can choose from the lube of the month ($10/month), a toy of the month ($25/month), or the full on Spice Box, which features two full-size items, one or two "intimate" items, and two to three trial-size items.
3. Papergang: Papergang by Ohh Deer is the ultimate subscription box service for stationery lovers. Every month the subscribers receive a beautifully crafted box filled with snazzy paper goodies like desk pads, notebooks, sticker sheets, art prints and other stationary treats like pens, pencils and washi tape. All the items are thoughtfully curated based on a monthly theme. Each selection is exclusive and created in collaboration with different artists. Their wide selection of products and the remarkable illustrations on each of them is what makes Papergang stand out. In addition, they plant a tree for every four boxes sold. So a big YAY for the environment too! You can also buy other cool stuff like art prints, planners, candles, jewelry and fun socks from Ohh Deer's website.
How Much Control Do You Have? Some subscription services send the same monthly box to every subscriber. Others, such as Stitch Fix, tailor the contents to your personal tastes based on a questionnaire you fill out when you sign up. A few, such as Julep, allow you to preview each month’s box before it’s shipped and skip that month if you don’t want it, or even personally choose some or all of the items you receive. This means you’ll never have to waste money on an item you don’t want – but on the downside, your monthly box won’t be a special surprise.
4. London Tea Club: If you're a tea drinker who wants to get out of the comfort zone and explore the delicious world of rare and exotic loose leaf teas, you should subscribe to the London Tea Club already! Each month you get a new tea carefully packed in a glass vial. The box also includes a detailed note about the tea, tea estate where it was grown and the brewing instructions. The selection is curated with seasonal tea drinking in mind - something LTC's Director Cecelia Lau prefers herself. For instance, this month the subscribers got to enjoy tangy Zomba Pearls White Tea from Malawi. Lightly processed teas are perfect for summer as they are considered to be more cooling. These include white teas, green oolong teas and most young sheng and green teas. Meanwhile, roasted, fermented and aged teas which are considered to be warming are selected for their winter boxes. These include black/red teas, shou puerh, aged sheng puerhs, roasted oolongs, highly oxidized oolongs and certain roasted green teas like Hojicha. Moreover, the selection is responsibly sourced from small farms and independent cooperatives that encourage sustainable tea farming, so the curated teas are all-natural and organic.